Carol Morello, Anthony Faiola and Michael Birnbaum

Kharkiv, Ukraine: A train carrying bodies and black boxes from a shot-down Malaysia Airlines flight arrived in this eastern Ukrainian city on Tuesday morning, but the remains of nearly a third of the people aboard the plane were missing, a Dutch forensics expert said.

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MH17: missing bodies spark anger

The arrival of a refrigerated train carrying bodies of MH17 victims was shrouded in secrecy, but confusion turned to outrage when it was revealed that almost 100 bodies are missing, reports Paul McGeough in Kharkiv.

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MH17: missing bodies spark anger

The arrival of a refrigerated train carrying bodies of MH17 victims was shrouded in secrecy, but confusion turned to outrage when it was revealed that almost 100 bodies are missing, reports Paul McGeough in Kharkiv.

Only 200 bodies were aboard the train that arrived in Kharkiv from the eastern war zone on Tuesday, said Jan Tuinder, the head of an international team of forensics experts tasked with preparing the bodies for transport to Holland. Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was carrying 298 passengers and crew when it was shot down by a Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile on Thursday over territory held by Moscow-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine, US and Ukrainian authorities have said.

The number of bodies that arrived in the train’s refrigerated rail cars was significantly lower than the 282 bodies, plus 87 body parts believed to belong to the remaining 16 victims, that Ukrainian officials have said were recovered. The train, which left the rebel-held mining town of Torez on Monday night, took more than 17 hours to travel a route that normally takes five hours or less.

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Asked about the discrepancy, Michael Bociurkiw, a spokesman for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said on Tuesday in Donetsk that 290 was “the last number [of bodies] we were told” had been recovered. “We had no possible way to verify that count,” he said.

He said an international group of observers saw body parts at the crash site on Tuesday. There still has not been any systematic attempt to comb the scene for all human remains, he said.

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Mr Tuinder said he did not know the whereabouts of the missing bodies.

A guard stands on a train carrying the remains of victims of Malaysia Airlines MH17 downed over rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine after it arrived in the city of Kharkiv. Photo: Reuters

The train, which had been held up for days in Torez near the crash site, arrived about 12:30pm. Tuesday in Kharkiv, where more than 90 forensics experts and about 30 diplomats waited for it at a small, secondary train station.

“It was a very emotional moment, when the train stopped in an area somewhere in a foreign country,” Mr Tuinder said. “It was a very respectful moment. It was very quiet.”

The first group of bodies will be flown to Holland on Wednesday morning, officials said.

The remains were being processed by forensics experts from the Netherlands, France, Malaysia and Australia — all countries whose citizens died in the crash. They were placing the remains in stronger body bags and putting them in sealed coffins for transfer to the Netherlands, where the process of identifying the victims would start.

The delivery of the bodies and the plane’s data and cockpit voice recorders offered some hope that an international investigation might clarify how the civilian airliner was shot down. Experts warned, however, that the crash site has been compromised.

The vast main site of the plane crash was secured by only two men with rifles on Tuesday, despite an international outcry for an impartial investigation to begin there as soon as possible.

A Dutch forensics expert says there are bodies missing on the train carrying victims of the MH17 disaster. Photo: AFP

Small pieces of plane debris blew in the wind as grasshoppers buzzed in the wheat fields. No one was inspecting the fields except journalists, nor were there guards besides the two men who idled on chairs 200 feet from a piece of the cockpit.

In a nearby village, other pieces of the plane that appeared to have shrapnel marks and could be important for an investigation sat untended at the side of a road.

There were reports of intense fighting near rebel-held Donetsk, roughly 60 km west of the crash site. Sporadic gunfire and explosions were heard around the airport and a mining compound in the city, the cradle of the separatists’ self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. Fighting on Monday damaged 28 transformer substations, leaving some districts in the region without power, according to a statement on the Donetsk City Council’s Web site.

The processing of the remains in Kharkiv is “going to take some time,” said Esther Naber, a spokeswoman for the Dutch forensics team, “because of the sad fact we have so many victims.”

The train carrying the remains pulled into the Balashovka Railway Station, where the locomotive was switched and taken to a building at the nearby Malysheva factory, a compound that produces military tanks and drilling equipment.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, whose country is home to 193 of the passengers killed in the shootdown, said on Tuesday in The Hague that Ukraine has agreed to allow the Netherlands to lead the investigation. The black boxes, which were turned over earlier to Malaysian representatives in Donetsk, were aboard the train that arrived in Kharkiv, Mr Rutte said. Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, a Boeing 777, was en route from Amsterdam to the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, when it was shot down.

Mr Rutte said the Netherlands would observe its first national day of mourning in more than 50 years on Wednesday, when planes carrying the remains of the MH17 victims are scheduled to arrive at an airport in Eindhoven. The Dutch king and queen are expected to attend an arrival ceremony, along with Rutte, other government officials and foreign dignitaries.

British Prime Minister David Cameron tweeted on Tuesday that British air accident investigators would analyse data from the MH17 black boxes, in response to a Dutch request.

In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said on Tuesday that separatist leader Alexander Borodai had lived up to two of the three agreements he had made during behind-the-scenes negotiations that resulted in the handover of the black boxes and the remains. He said the rebels have not yet granted “full access to the crash site so that the investigation may begin.”

A Malaysian team has “taken custody of the black boxes, which appear to be in good condition,” he said. “They will held securely in Malaysian custody while the international investigation team is being formalised. At that time, we will pass the black boxes to the international investigation team for further analysis.”

Mr Najib said he was “relieved” that the two sides were able to “secure the breakthrough” that has ended the impasse but that he continued to press for full access to the crash site for investigators.

“So far, the agreement has been honoured,” he said. “Malaysia requests that this cooperation continue, and that investigators are granted the full access to the site which was agreed.”